


To Sass

by ouro_boros



Category: Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
Genre: 5+1 Things, Blanket Permission, First Kiss, M/M, Podfic Welcome, and shouldve been 3, but theres a part 2 for one of the things, except its 4 + 1
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-26
Updated: 2019-10-26
Packaged: 2021-01-04 02:20:03
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,504
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21189950
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ouro_boros/pseuds/ouro_boros
Summary: Four times Arthur sasses Ford, and one time hesasseshim.(Sass — be aware of, meet, know, have sex with)





	To Sass

I. Sass — to be aware of

The stranger at the end of the bar was a hard man not to see.

He was a loud drunk—a friendly drunk, always buying rounds (though Arthur had noticed that these purchases seemed awfully well planned out, the patrons grouped around him always ended up paying more)—and very much enjoyed the process of inebriation. They’d never really met, only happened to visit the same bar. However, the man frequently made eye contact and grinned an uncomfortable grin at him. It was because of these moments that Arthur made a point to never say hello. Well, that and the fact that he should really only be buying his own pints.

At any rate, the man was mostly a presence at the other end of the bar. A presence Arthur didn’t much care to learn more about.

II. Sass — to know

After a regretful post-break-up night of drinking, Arthur came to the conclusion that he knew his fellow patron very well, considering they were sitting in jail together for reasons unknown. He figured it had something to do with the bloody knuckles the mostly-stranger was sporting.

“Say,” he said, “you wouldn't happen to remember what happened last night, would you?”

“Oh, yeah. It wasn't too bad, I only started a bar fight.”

“Oh, you only started a—_Only started a bar fight?_”

“Sure! I've been here for a lot worse! Well, not specifically _ here, _ I suppose; it was actually over on—”

“Look, I don't know what kind of life you've lived up to this point and honestly I don't care. But I have _never_ been to jail. _Never_.”

“Never?”

“_Never_. And my plan was to keep it that way, but now I’ve been to jail—”

“Once.”

“Yes, once! That sort of thing affects a man like me. I work in radio you know.”

“Do you? I don't recognize your voice, I have a pretty good brain for voices. And faces. And—”

“I didn't say I work _on_ the radio, I just work... _in_ radio.”

“Oh.”

They sat in silence for a moment, and the stranger began to whistle. Arthur groaned, covering his ears, abruptly becoming aware of his splitting headache. The stranger stopped whistling.

III. Sass — to meet

“I'm Ford, by the way,” he said weeks later, stretching his hand towards Arthur, resting his elbow on the bar.

Reluctantly, Arthur accepted the hand.

“Arthur.”

Ford laughed kindly (or unkindly, it was a very vast laugh, and it would have been difficult to decipher the width of it). 

“I know _your_ name, you’ve told me a half dozen times.”

“Oh.” He furrowed his brows. “What?”

“We have been friends for a while,” the stranger replied as if it were the most natural truth in the world, “and you’ve been very fond of introducing yourself. I just haven’t had the opportunity to tell you my name.”

“Haven’t you,” he said, not meaning anything by it but only to say something.

“No.” 

Ford stared at him with wide blue eyes. He didn’t seem to be blinking enough. Arthur blinked a quick six times (with a brief pause in the middle) to make up for it. 

“Anyway,” Ford continued, “I was hoping that perhaps if I introduced myself, you would be less prone to forgetting every time we do anything together. I know how you people feel about talking to strangers.”

Ford was right about one thing: he was a stranger. Aside from the jail cell, Arthur remembered no meetings, no introductions, and his eyes were getting tired of blinking. He forced them to stop.

“Actually, now that I say it, I did notice that the nights we talk, you drink more than when you’re by yourself. I should probably take offense to that. Or maybe you just have more fun with me. Probably that one.”

“Do you always talk this much?”

“Yes!” Ford answered, quite proud of this. “Got to have something to remind yourself you can hear when in the coldest reaches of space, likely never to see another living being again.”

Perhaps ironically, a long silence followed.

“You’re a bit eccentric, aren’t you?”

“I suppose so.”

IV. Sass — to know, continued

“An _alien_.”

“Yes.”

“And I’m meant to believe that.”

“Yes.”

Arthur couldn’t come up with another question.

“I know this is startling,” said Ford, his calming hand attempting to place itself on Arthur's shoulder, “but that really _isn’t_ the part we need to be focusing on right now.”

“What other part is there?” Arthur gripped the hand’s wrist and placed it back from whence it came.

“The part where the Earth was just destroyed.”

“Yes, well, I can’t say I quite believe that you're an alien, and I certainly don’t believe the Earth was just destroyed!”

Ford nearly pouted, but he was spending too much time glaring into Arthur’s eyes in an amateurish attempt at persuasion and concern.

“Why not?”

Arthur made an assortment of noises, none of which Ford understood the meaning of but all of which about summed up to: _I don’t know either._

“Because! Because, the Earth is an entire planet, not just—not just a—”

“A building, marked for destruction?”

Arthur heard the note of apathetic despair in that question, and chose to ignore it.

“Yes,” he said.

“Arthur,” Ford began in the most calming voice he had, his heart doing its best to pump metaphorical gold as it all came up lead, “promise you'll let me protect you.”

“Is this an Earth-exploding specific promise or does it have the potential to apply elsewhere?”

Ford's intentions led him to think _Elsewhere, yes, that, it’s so dangerous out there, Arthur, please let me help,_ but he had known Arthur for years now. He knew Arthur, British malaise personified. He knew humans, with their over-attachment to choice. And he knew that Arthur didn’t trust him right now. Maybe he never had, but Ford was nothing if not an optimist.

“Earth-exploding specific.”

Arthur paused, chewing on this.

“Fine. I promise.”

V. Sass — to have sex with

It was many years later, or the equivalent of years in whatever measurement of time could be properly used with no nearby sun to rise or set, that Arthur could claim some facsimile of comfort with his not-really-new situation. He wouldn't, but he could.

He especially wouldn’t at the moment, as his mouth was not available for comment.

"Arthur," said Ford, taking a breath from the rather methodical kiss he'd just been experiencing.

"What?"

"You're kissing me."

"Yes?"

"Well. I had always assumed I'd need to kiss you first."

"Oh. Right. Should I stop, then?"

Ford looked affronted.

"No," he answered.

"Alright. So should I keep on, or…"

Ford took the initiative, as he'd intended to in the first place, and began their kiss again. This second kiss was much harder and more desperate than the first, perhaps informing Arthur on the disparity of time between the moment he first wanted to kiss Ford and the moment Ford first wanted to kiss him, but more likely wiping his mind entirely.

"Ford," said Arthur, taking a breath from the rather haphazard kiss he'd just been experiencing.

"What is it, Arthur?"

"You're kissing me."

"I am."

"Well. I'd always assumed that, once I'd kissed you, you would either run away or start laughing."

"Oh. Right. I mean, no of course not! I'm—I've been invested in experiencing our relationship in the aftermath of us kissing for quite a while. Running away would defeat the point." 

"Laughing it is, then?"

Despite himself, Ford did laugh a little at that. But, "No," he said. "Where did you get that idea, Arthur? I couldn't very well laugh while I'm kissing you some more, could I?"

"You could," Arthur protested. "It just wouldn't be a very successful kiss."

As if to prove Arthur's point for him, Ford dove his mouth back up to Arthur's just as more laughter swept over him. His teeth hit Arthur's, making both men cringe. However, they were far too pent up to stop, so they just kept at it until Ford guided Arthur to a chair and sat in his lap, hands stroking Arthur's shirt up around his waist. Arthur hummed when he felt those fingers touch his skin, but he abruptly stopped when his mind processed what Ford had been saying.

"Wait," Arthur said, putting his hands on Ford's to stop their movement.

Ford's hands squirmed, as did the rest of his body.

"No, no waiting," he spoke against Arthur's lips. "All manner of things can happen when you wait. None of which involve someone being very embarrassed if they come into the kitchen."

Unfortunately for Ford (and fortunately for Arthur), the event of someone coming into the kitchen and being very embarrassed was reasonably likely. Thus, due to the unlikely nature of the ship where they made their long-term temporary home, the event was unlikely to occur unless it occurred in tandem with another, more unlikely event, such as the kitchen suddenly becoming the cage of Trillian's new pet snake.

"How long is 'quite a while?'" Arthur asked. "How long have you thought about kissing me?"

"Oh. Well um. It started about… five years after meeting you?"

Arthur sputtered like, somewhere, someone was trying very hard to start his engine and was not sure why it wasn't working.

"Just say ten years!" said Arthur. "I can do subtraction, you could just say ten years!"

"Yes but five years sounds so much less pathetic."

Despite Arthur’s proclamation concerning his ability in subtraction, it took him a moment to realize what exactly had happened ten years ago.

“Wait, you—”

Ford recognized the facial expression and prepared himself for what was coming.

“That… wouldn’t have anything to do with the reason why you kidnapped me?”

“I _really_ wish you wouldn’t call it ‘kidnapping.’”

“It did! You kidnapped me with some vague plot of isolating me and getting me all to yourself!”

“Why do you assume the plot had to be vague? Aren’t I capable of a specific plot?”

“Did you have a specific plot?”

“No. I didn’t have a vague one either, I’m just asking.”

This didn’t satisfy Arthur, who made a noise and a gesture which didn't quite suit each other. So Ford continued, "That’s not what I intended, I promise. I could only bring one person, it’s hardly a good idea to bring more than one confused human on a trip that I thought would hinge on stealth. And of course it was _you,_ because…”

Arthur exercised the kind of patience he usually reserved for boiling kettles of water.

Ford sighed.

“Because I’d realized how much I wanted to kiss you a few months earlier and I could hardly let you die. But aside from that,” he said before Arthur could exclaim whatever it was he was about to exclaim, “you were my closest friend. And you’re genuinely funny. Otherwise useless, but I’ve found that survival is mainly a morale thing.”

Arthur narrowed his eyes.

“You never get my jokes,” he tested.

“I know. You never get that I can’t understand sarcasm. But you’re often funny anyway.”

“That’s an insult, isn’t it.”

“It’s not meant to be,” offered Ford, despite knowing that Arthur would take it as one. “Now, can we please go back to kissing? I much preferred that.”

After a moment, Arthur nodded, and Ford’s hands immediately dashed up to where they’d been, stroking the bare skin of Arthur’s chest as his tongue did its best impression of a Boeotian eel searching its way around Arthur’s gums. Arthur pulled back with a gasp, partially in appreciation, but more so in discomfort at being confronted with Ford’s very inhuman tongue. Then Ford's thumb found his nipple and after an embarrassing noise emerged from Arthur's throat, he decided an eel in his mouth was worth Ford's lips against his.

Once said eel was satisfied—which took quite a while—Ford moved down to Arthur’s neck, sucking and licking and biting there until he began to feel the effects presenting themselves in the lap below him. He re-doubled his efforts. 

Arthur, his hand on the back of Ford’s head as though absentmindedly trying to keep it there, cleared his throat.

“Um. Ford.”

Ford hummed, lips still thoroughly attached to Arthur’s neck.

“If you’re so… invested,” as that was the word Ford had used, he switched over from sucking to licking with a transitional bite, “then why do you keep leaving me?”

Ford gave a last lick. He’d started the motion before he’d heard the question, and he couldn’t stop it once he had. After that, though, his head moved back to look in Arthur’s eyes.

“What do you mean?” he asked.

“Well,” Arthur said, “it’s a fairly common occurrence that I’ll be somewhere and you’ll be there with me, and then you’ll… no longer be there. Like when we were on Earth—the second time. You were gone for years, and then you came back like nothing had happened.”

Ford looked no less confused.

When it became clear that Arthur wouldn’t be clarifying his question, Ford sighed and said, “Arthur, I may have been on Earth for fifteen years, but I’ve been gone nearly as long. Is this an Earth thing? One of those weird Earth morals?”

This time, luckily, Arthur’s silence itself was illuminating.

“Look. Human monogamy,” Ford started in his _Guide_ voice, “is a strange thing. It makes some amount of sense within context, what with the tiny lifespan—”

“Oh, and what’s _your_ lifespan?” Arthur asked belligerently.

“Doesn’t matter, point is, for Betelgeusians, monogamy is a bit different.”

“Wait, just a moment ago you were talking like monogamy was some bizarre human invention?”

“No, no, definitely not. It’s just their—_your_ version of it that’s bizarre.”

Further explanation was not forthcoming, so Arthur answered, “Fine. What does any of this have to do with you constantly abandoning me?”

“Um,” Ford answered, _Guide_ voice a little broken. “Well. For Betelgeusians, monogamy is less about one _person_ and more about one _relationship_. Relationships tend to be made up of four or more people, though not always. And no matter how far away they are from each other, no matter what they do apart, they always come back together. That’s the ideal. So, really, it should be very romantic that I leave you so often.”

“Should it.”

“It should! Though um. It may also have something to do with my general selfishness and discomfort with anyone depending on me.”

“Ah. That makes more sense.”

Arthur kissed him, putting the hand still in Ford’s hair to use. When he pulled away, Ford looked at him with wide eyes (though not much wider than usual).

“Arthur,” he said, “you kissed me.”

“Yes.”

“Well. I thought you wouldn’t want to, after I told you all that.”

Arthur kissed him again.

“I already _knew_ all that. Or the last bit of it, anyway.”

“Oh.”

Ford kissed him back, and later, Trillian’s snake was very embarrassed when it walked into the kitchen with legs it hadn’t previously had.

**Author's Note:**

> I can honestly say I have no idea how long ago I started this, which might be way V is so much longer than the others. Hope you enjoyed!
> 
> [You can find me at oury-boros on Tumblr!](https://oury-boros.tumblr.com/)


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